


Beatitudes

by Lord_Turkish



Category: Homestuck, Year Walk - Fandom
Genre: Faestuck, Folklore fuck yes, Humanstuck, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 16:30:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lord_Turkish/pseuds/Lord_Turkish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started when a preacher’s son fucked a boy with an affinity for cheap cigarettes.</p><p>It was New Years Eve and they had sworn it was only going to be a quick walk through the woods. Only a walk. However frost spread on their skin despite their heavy coats and woolen scarves; who’s to say there’s any shame in getting creative with how you melt it? In the shadow of the watermill they sunk into the snow and vowed to take each other to hell and back again… and in a wild fit of dramatic irony mutual desperation delivered them exactly that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beatitudes

**Author's Note:**

> My computer is having some formatting difficulties, so I apologize if any part of this reads wonky. Also I haven't run this draft by an editor yet so if you spot a mistake or a typo, please point it out to me so I can fix it! Thanks!

_Eridan,_

_I’m sorry._

_-Feferi_

_-Note found in the subject’s coat pocket, estimated to have been written approximately seven hours before the New Year._

_(R.L.)_

 

The story begins with a hound.

No.

Hang on.

That’s not right.

It started with a chapel.

A chapel where nooses were draped along the rafters like Christmas wreaths, each with a layer of frost clinging to the rope like skin on flesh. Anyone who walked beneath them would be confronted with a near-irresistible urge to press their palms to the ice and melt it. Chip and scrape it so it collects under their fingernails. Peel it like a hide off an animal and wear it as if it were their own.

However out of the entire congregation and clergy, no one succumbed. Week after week of uneasy masses, stiff bodies lined in pews and eyes that darted to and away from the frozen ropes like skittish rodents around a mousetrap. Not once were they brought up in conversation. If any of us attempted to speak on the issue, we’d find ourselves miraculously mute. Corked by our own words. They only could be addressed through written words, turned out. But even then the ink always seems to fade unusually quick, and I’m unsure of how long any of this will be legible for anyone but myself, Rose and Terezi to read.

Now that I think about it that probably makes it a shitty start to this whole journal thing.

Fuck, I suck at this.

Legitimately, unforgivably suck at it.

Only reason why I’m even doing this is because apparently this piece of shit Greek tragedy isn’t complete without my take on it.

But I digress.

Christ, where was I?

Chapel’s shitty to start with.

It started... it started somewhere. I’m thinking of too many things at once to concentrate into a single phrase. Rose. Rings. Eridan. Hounds. Hunts. Churches. Nooses. Terezi. Frost. Kankri. Cronus—

Cronus.

It started when a preacher’s son fucked a boy with an affinity for cheap cigarettes.

That… actually works. Yeah.

Preacher’s son.

Chain smoker.

Getting’ down.

Okay go.

It was New Years Eve and they had sworn it was only going to be a quick walk through the woods. Only a walk. However frost spread on their skin despite their heavy coats and woolen scarves; who’s to say there’s any shame in getting creative with how you melt it? In the shadow of the watermill they sunk into the snow and vowed to take each other to hell and back again… and in a wild fit of dramatic irony mutual desperation delivered them exactly that.

There. It started there.

Kind of.

Not really.

But fuck it, it’s the best place I can think of so we’re sticking with it. Also, before I go any further: I’m not some sort of sick voyeur who stalked my brother on that night. That’s not how I know what went down. I’m just telling you what he told me, except abridged and altered for the sake of everyone’s patience and sanity. He’s the third seer of the trio, after all. His part matters. Just, not the way he wants to tell it. Because fuck that.

Anyway.

Kankri loved Cronus like a lost cause. It’d be a stretch to say Cronus reciprocated. He was a lonesome bastard who swore up and down that he could do better than the albino bible thumper, as if he had any company besides his left hand waiting in the wings. Yet he’d say it to anyone who’d listen: he’d be gone as soon as something better strutted into his life. Someone worth the off putting charm and explorative touch the cocky son of a bastard flaunted.

(Namely: No One.)

Yet no matter how many skirts his hands traveled up or pants down, they always found their home on “Saint Vantas’s” hips. He’d never admit that though. He’d rather cough on his own tar smoke and sneer something thoughtless. The variety of thoughtlessness usually depended on the listener which more often than not was his younger brother. So it’d be along the lines of how Eridan would have better luck getting laid if he’d “stop being such a fucking faggot” and grew a pair.

_“Chicks dig men of action. Not some limp-wristed bitch who sits around pinin’ and shit.”_

_“Limp wristed? How the fuck am I limp wristed?”_

_“Ya’ know. Like, flouncy. For instance—three guys could walk in an’ make me their bitch right here an’ now and I’d still be less of a waif than you.”_

_“That’s—what kind of shit example is that?”_

_“…you look better with your mouth shut, y’know that?”_

I have no idea if that exchange actually happened. Terezi swears it did but she tells me a lot of things just to fuck with me. Also why is this relevant? Why should I give a shit about this stroke-inducing idio

1T S3TS TH3 M00D CH3RRY B3RRY

Whatever, this story isn’t about what Cronus did or didn’t say or if his love for the walking bible passage was in earnest. It’s about how he was slaughtered three hours after he lost his virginity. It’s about how his body wasn’t recovered until the river thawed the following March, frigid corpse bloated beyond recognition.

It’s about how my brother was found shivering at the church’s steps the following sunrise clutching one of the nooses except this one hadn’t been frosted with water but with blood. He pressed it to his chest, half-melted in his body heat and staining his already red sweater as he muttered the goddamn beatitudes over and over and over again.

Our dad was the first to find him.

He said Kankri looked like a banshee from far off, a phantom whiter than a snow flurry and barely corporal enough to suspend the pea coat cloaked over his shoulders. He had eyes as empty as his cheeks were hollow and when our dad finally broke him out of his biblical mantra, he sure as hell did howl like one. Kankri wept over all the dead and the hound that had piled them up, how the Grimm made the river run red and emptied their village so only the spirits of the forest remained. There was nothing anyone could say to calm him because damn you all, he knew.

He saw.

Saw it all with his seer eyes.

He rattled on like a snake’s tail all the way to the hospital, answering no ones questions in favor of describing in graphic detail what each of his loved ones looked like as corpses. After every other sentence he’d run his tongue over his chapped lips, trying and failing to melt the frost that was somehow still spread across them.

It wasn’t until Cronus’s missing status was brought to attention that he quieted down and actually having a short conversation.

_“Kankri… do you have any idea where Cronus is?”_

_“…yes. I do.”_

_“Really?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Where is he? Did he—”_

_“He’s in the river.”_

_“What?”_

_“I already said. In the river. Please listen more carefully.”_

_“Why—what?”_

_“I already—”_

_“How did he get there?”_

_“I put him there.  Well, not just me. The Grimm helped. Brought me my rifle.”_

_“…Kankri.”_

_“Shot him like the cur he was.”_

_“Kankri!”_

_“I’d prefer if we stopped talking about this. It’s very triggering and I’m already having enough trouble keeping my head on straight.”_

Oh look, something relevant.

I’m in awe.

>:P

Moving on.

Kankri’s love for sermons faded with his fixation with death. From there on out he never spoke more than three words unless someone brought up the name Ampora. Then he’d tear the closest person to ribbons with what words he had, damning the entire bloodline to a subarctic hell and swearing that he was proclaiming God’s own truth by this. He never let anyone forget he was a seer. That he’d seen what Cronus would have become should he been allowed to live and that someone better put the youngest one down quick because he was going to be even worse.

_“Angel Maker.”_

_“Angel Maker.”_

_“Angel Maker.”_

Of course spewing threats and blatantly admitting to murder led to my brother getting convicted. The courts deemed him psychotic and he was sentenced to a clinic two hours away from town. The gossip surrounding the case kept the town alight for months, making it easy for most to overlook more subtle dramas that were unfolding. Like Eridan skipping his brother’s funeral in favor of wandering aimlessly through town until the spring chill forced him back home. Then he continued to sulk over how I had cut off communication with him since, what do you know, it’s kind of awkward talking to the guy related to the guy my brother murdered.

Fucking sue me.

But Eridan being Eridan he took it as an opportunity to meditate on how hilariously, even in death, Cronus was still fucking him over.

The radio silence between us stretched over three years. Enough time for him to grow resentful and to be honest I don’t really blame him. I kind of let a solid friendship roll over and choke on its own spit because I didn’t have the balls to navigate around the elephant so large it broke the room that was our brother’s previous relationship.

Also Eridan is… he has a fragile ego. It doesn’t take much to break him down into a neurotic blubbering mess.

Or that’s how it used to be. Turned out he grew a little more backbone than anyone ever thought.

Didn’t stop him from being a fucking idiot though.

God I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but I’m writing this down so posterity can know that I warned the prick long before any of this bullshittery went down. That’s also assuming our shared familial sob story wasn’t enough to turn him off from those damn woods already.

Admittedly I was drunk when I did it.

Actually I was outright smashed.

It was at a party Peixes was hosting for our class graduation. He was trailing after her the entire time, clinging to the periphery of her every conversation. The more intoxicated the group got the more openly she teased him for it, pinching his cheeks and shooing him away to go scuff after someone else’s heels. Eridan only half listened, giving her space but never drawing his attention away from her, especially when Sollux arrived. I was on my fourth beer (fuck you I’m a lightweight so what), so naturally I took this as prime time to lay some serious shit on him. I pulled him to the side and like the unwavering figure of poise and tactfulness I am, word vomited every thought and concern I had on him.

Also maybe a little real puke a little later on.

That’s beside the point.

I don’t remember what I said exactly, again I was pretty far gone. All I know was that I let him get a grand total of two words in edgewise before going on a long yarn about permafrost and churches and hounds that never used to bite but now did. Dreams of furious Capricorns and the kind of nooses that weren’t unspeakably twisted within our church that Terezi tied just for him.

_“Eridan I know we’re all sorts of fucked but hear me out—hear me—no you get back over here you piece of shit. Listen. I know we don’t hang out anymore but that, that doesn’t mean I haven’t stopped looking out for you. It’s—it’s really fucking weird talking to you after, well, you know. I just can’t do it. It’s fucked up. You know it. But my bullshit social problems aren’t the reason why I’m talking to you. Yeah, smartass, I have a reason.”_

_“Cut to the fuckin’ chase, Kar.”_

_“Don’t walk. Don’t give me that look you know what I’m talking about. Also don’t ask me how I know about it I just do, ala that load of freaky dream bull I just dropped on you. Bad shit is about to go down and if you go and do what I fucking know you’re about to go and do you’ll have a nice padded cell next to Kankri’s. At best. And while you’re an obnoxious, anxious wreck and a real bitch to deal with I… I don’t want to lose someone else. Okay.?”_

_“…so you think I’m a bitch.”_

_“Oh my fucking god.”_

Oh god. Did I really say it like that?

Y34H.

Of course I’d make it sound like absolute psychobabble. Maybe it does run in the family.

Y0U’R3 G3TT1NG 0FF TR4CK.

Alright, okay I’m going.

Despite my allegations, turns out he had no idea what year walking was back then. Sure, he’d heard it mentioned several times when Kankri was all anyone could talk about but he’d never gone out of his way to learn what it meant. He prided himself as a young man whose interests lay more in the realm of historical fact than an engulfing swandive into local superstition.

But that was before Feferi’s note.

Before Rose.

And, honestly? He always did have a weakness for whimsicality.

 

* * *

 

 

_December 31st. 23:20_

_Forty minutes until New Years_

“Eridan.”

At the sound of his name, Eridan sent yet another piece of gravel skittering down the ice-coated backdrive of the local dentistry. He had six more pressed in his rapidly chilling palm and he hoped at least one of them would make it past the end of the pavement and into the brush.

_“Eridan.”_

He had been alone before Rose approached him. There was no question it was her, he didn’t even need to glance over his shoulder to check. He could tell by the flatline of her American accent. Also who the fuck else would track him down to this drive when it was late enough the nearby security lamp might as well been flickering out of exhaustion instead of faulty wiring. Hell who would even be here, period. That was certainly what he was wondering as he shifted uncomfortably on the parking curb he was seated on.

“Silence? Oh come now. No need to be so immature.”

He chucked another chunk of gravel. Five left. “Piss off.”

After a lengthy silence there was a sigh and the scrape of boots against ice. For a brief and confoundingly terrifying moment he thought she had turned heel and left him to sulk into the new year alone. However that fear was immediately relieved when a blunt pain struck his tailbone and sent him sprawling face first into the snow.

“The _fuck_ Ros!”

“I apologize, it looked like your ass needed a break from the cold and I had to take a wild guess as to which end to kick. It appears I guessed wrong.”

“That wasn’t fuckin’ nessary.”

Her crunching footsteps trailed around him as he scrambled up onto his knees, shoving his bare hands into his coat pockets to take some of the edge off of the snow’s sting. The rocks dropped in the scuffle, he curled his fingers around their sparse contents and the cold cut deeper when he felt the familiar brush of a torn notebook page. He’d almost forgotten it was there.

Almost.

When he looked up she was already standing over him. “If I could have avoided coming out here, believe me I would have.”

Eridan narrowed his eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be starving yourself in a woodshed or somethin’?”

Rose arched a brow. “I could ask you the same thing.”

Another silence, this time on his end. This wasn’t something he could deflect, she knew as damn well as he did where his mind had been the past week. She was partly responsible for it, after all, if not fully. Deftly lacing his obsessions with her own within a handful of conversations. Because of this she called him impressionable and grasping. He’d rather think of himself as open minded and a touch desperate.

It’s like what they say about desperate times: steal the whole damn measuring stick and beat time stupid with it because fuck that.

“Did you fast?” She finally asked.

He nodded and awkwardly rocked back onto his feet. With the ice he almost fell a second time, but managed to catch himself as he stood. “I was going to go once I was done here.”

“Busy schedule.”

“Shut up.”

She cocked her head, considering him. He couldn’t see much of her face—the majority of it was cast in the shadow of her hood—but her skin was wind bitten red where the light did touch. Odds were she’d been out much longer than he had and judging by the calculating glint in her eye she wasn’t about to call it a night anytime soon. “You should come with me.”

He scoffed. “Why?”

“I enjoy your company.”

“You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you. If anything I find you pitiable,” she stated dryly. “Besides, even if you did stir such a strong aversion in me I’d still approach you with this offer because I know how to place my work above my own pettiness.”

Eridan stared back at her, unsure of what to make of her statement. “You do know it was my brother who went on that walk, not me.”

“I’m aware you’re still alive, yes.”

“Then don’t assume I’ll be some sort of boon because outside of what you’ve told me I know jack shit, and no I don’t care if it’s supposed to be my heritage.” He spat, “I don’t do magic, Ros. I don’t piss away my time readin’ those books you lug around because unlike you I was smart enough not to study something so fuckin’ fake saint nick and the boogeyman take time out of their day to laugh uproariously at idiots like you who pose around pretendin’ to be hotshots for gettn’ a degree in it.”

In the beat before Rose answers, Eridan had the self-awareness to wonder if Karkat was still rubbing off on him after all these years. She smirked. “Yet you’re more than happy to come flouncing along with me.”

He crossed his arms with a scowl dangerously akin to a petulant child’s, as if he were protesting a broken doll or truck instead of caught in a verbal spar. “Damn straight. I didn’t come out to freeze my ass off for nothin’.”

“Of course.” She sighed, gaze remaining fixed on him. “You’re a regular martyr.”

“With the shit you put me through I’m willin’ to agree with you.” Eridan snapped, “also will you quit gogglin’ at me like that it’s freaking me out.”

She blinked, momentarily caught off guard. Point one Ampora. “Sorry. It’s just that you still have snow stuck to you, primarily your lips.” Rose took a step forward, hands tucked into her pockets. “You really must be freezing if it hasn’t melted. It sticks even when you talk.”

“What?”

“Your lips,” she restated, “are frosted over with snow.”

His hand flew up to his mouth and sure enough his fingers were greeted by a chilly nip. With a curse he swiped his knuckles across his mouth and rubbed the offending snow away. “Better?”

“Very.” Rose hummed. Her gaze was still fixed on him but he could tell her mind was somewhere else entirely. The effect was less than comforting.

“Ros.”

“Hm?” She refocused, once again fully present.

“What the fuck.”

A grin tugged the corner of her lips. “What is “the fuck”. There are many fucks to be had, I’ll be damned if I know which particular one you’re talking about.”

His scowl returned. “Fuck you.”

“Ah. That one.”

With a huff Eridan fished his phone out of his coat, fogged breath hanging in the air a short moment before dissipating as he unlocked it. He squinted against the unnaturally bright screen light. “Walk starts at midnight, right?”

Rose nodded. “We should get going if we want to make it into the woods in time. I’ll be more than happy to give you a ride, you may shower me in favors in exchange later.”

He glanced up from his phone. “If there is a later.”

“I prefer the phrase ‘when’.”

 _“If.”_ He muttered and dropped his phone back into his pocket. Before she could retaliate further he stepped past her and toward the street where he assumed she had parked her car. While he had half expected to carry on the conversation regardless (she had always been sinfully chatty) it also wasn’t too shocking when she resigned herself to silence as well. After all, there wasn’t much more to be said. They were walking, and neither one of them were certain if they were going to live to see another sunrise. Not much to be said beyond that unless they wanted to get needlessly macabre. 

They slid into Rose's car and were on the road real quick. Faster, less temptation to chatter. Eridan kept his gaze fixed out the window, his unease only worsened whenever Rose was in his line of sight. Everything beyond the roadside was frigid still. Too cold for the creatures even, yet another tally to add to his scorepad of worries. If anxiety was a game he would be winning. More than winning. He'd be world champion of fretting and vein-busting pulses. Maybe that was why he didn't immediately notice Rose had made a wrong turn, sticking to the tamer suburban outskirts rather than diving headfirst down the forest roads. His mind was too twisted around other things to pay attention to routes.

That, and in all the still he could have sworn he'd seen a shadow twitch and shift as they passed a thicket of trees.

It had vanished by the time he had blinked, however the image remained pressed in his mind. A mangey silhouette that had slunk briefly around one of the pale birch trunks on four legs and a flash of eyes. Two eyes. One feral yellow, the other blind white. 

Eridan's stomach constricted. He dropped his gaze down to his phone, trying to scrub the image from his brain. Maybe Karkat had been right, this could only lead to him becoming barking psychotic. With all this straining worry, so much worry he was beginning to see things.

~~_Because he could have sworn he had seen his brother in those eyes._ ~~

 

**Author's Note:**

> Some quick and helpful Wikipedia excerpts concerning Year Walking:
> 
> "Årsgång is an old (and little known) Swedish tradition; which is no longer practiced. The name itself is a composite word pronounced orsh-gong, which literally translates as year (års) walk (gång); or 'Annual walk'.
> 
> A complex form of divination in Swedish folk tradition... The tradition of year walking is predominantly recorded from Southern Sweden, and was usually practised at Christmas or New Year’s Eve. Different regions of Sweden give contrasting explanations for how this was accomplished. From Småland and Blekinge, the year walker was supposed to lock himself up in a dark room, without speaking to anyone nor taste food or drink. At midnight, he (or she) walked to the parish church – or a cluster of different churches – and circled it three times (or more), then he (or she) blew into the church’s key hole. With this the year walker temporarily lost his (or her) Christianity. When this happened, supernatural beings appeared and challenged the year walker. If the walker managed these tests, glimpses of the future could appear; either in vision or by sounds. These could be interpreted as glimpses of what would happen the following year. The phenomena could vary greatly regionally or even in the same district."


End file.
